1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to telecommunications systems. Specifically, the invention relates to the use of a set of prefix characteristics and a multi-function telephone number to direct a call to communications devices assigned to that telephone number.
2. General Background and State of the Art
Existing telephone systems have become inundated with cellular telephones, pagers, facsimile machines, and other communications devices which have strained the availability of telephone numbers. To ease the strain, three digit area codes have been added based upon geographic location to increase availability. This has proved to be only a temporary solution, and has resulted in some cities having many different area codes, increasing the numbers that must be dialed when placing a call.
One prior art technique attempts to bypass or replace a recipient company's switchboard operator (or other means of directing incoming calls) with a preprogrammed code attached to the telephone number. For example, one prior art technique disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,076,121 allows callers to dial preprogrammed codes and a telephone number to reach a desired recipient or communications device. Each five-digit destination code (prefix) (see Table 5, col. 13, lines 50–67 and col. 14, lines 50–63 of the reference) would route the call directly to a specific group such as Accounts Payable, Sales, Engineering Director, Laundry Room, etc. Over 1,000 destination codes would be needed to reach the many groups in various organizations. Hence, the reference, at col. 12, lines 45–46, contains the statement “Therefore, there is no inherent limit on the quantity of FP codes which can be defined in the future.” Each telephone number is assigned at least one functional property code, that when dialed along with the telephone number, directs the call to a destination. This allows one telephone number to be used multiple times for many different communications devices. The recipient of a call, however, is responsible for assigning a functional property code to all of their telephone numbers; callers must then remember hundreds of functional property codes for each telephone number they wish to dial, which can vary widely not only for the telephone numbers of each recipient, but also from recipient to recipient. This technique, therefore, lacks a uniform standard that would make it easy for callers to remember a particular code, and creates the possibility of a caller having to dial a large, multi-digit functional property code before every telephone number. Code dialing could be done indirectly by a device that displays the available groups and allows the caller to select a target grout such as “Sales.”
Another prior art technique disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,465,295, allows a caller to dial a telephone number for a recipient followed by a coded suffix. This technique is used where a recipient has multiple telephones or communications devices, each having a different telephone number. The coded suffix directs the call to another one of the recipient's telephone numbers without having to remember the actual number for the particular telephone or communications device. Therefore, the caller does not need to remember or record every telephone number of a recipient; instead, the caller needs to dial only one number, followed by the appropriate coded suffix. This technique, however, does not solve the problem of limited availability of usable telephone numbers, since all communications devices of a recipient would be independently reachable by a separate telephone number.
The present invention addresses these problems with a simple, easy to use set of prefix characterstics that can be widely and uniformly applicable and that ease the strain created by the proliferation of communications devices and area codes. When combined with a telephone number, the set of prefix characteristics directs calls to communications devices, where multiple communications devices are assigned to common telephone numbers.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a system and method of routing calls to communications devices using multi-function telephone numbers, where a potentially large number of communications devices are assigned to a common telephone number.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a system and method of routing calls to communications devices using multi-function telephone numbers, where a potentially large number of communications devices are assigned to a common telephone number.
It is also, in object of the invention to reduce the number of telephone numbers by allocating one number to many different communications devices.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a way to reduce the number of area codes needed.